Introduction

Since the accession of ten new member states in 2004, the formal division between Western and Eastern European countries has diminished. However, despite clear benefits from this development, in the view of some commentators, accession has had a negative impact. One year before the enlargement, Migration Watch, a conservative London-based think-tank criticised the decision of the UK government claiming that the politicians fostered ‘(…) inward flows of people on a scale unknown in our history – without any apparent thought for the consequences’ (Migration Watch 2003). One of the alleged consequences is a pressure of new immigrants on fragile social protection systems in Western Europe. This concern was addressed by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2004, who stated that ‘(…) we are not against people coming here to work properly; we will not, however, allow our system to be exploited or abused’ (House of Commons 2004).

For students of European integration, social policy and international migration, studying the impact of immigration on politics of redistribution in Europe might be a mutual point of departure. From a global perspective, contrary to the liberalisation of trade and capital flow, ‘unblocking’ free workers’ circulation is lagging behind. Yet the European Union, with the guaranteed free movement of workers, has been a ‘policy laboratory’ where internal borders have been opened not only for goods, but also for people. For all decades of European integration, this brought about some serious socio-economic and political consequences. States have been under constant ‘contradiction management’ by keeping the balance between openness for migratory movements (due to labour shortages or humanitarian reasons) and closedness (caused by limited national resources and security reasons). Yet for a number of scholars, to argue whether migration poses a significant threat to the welfare state resources or if it rather provides a major support to welfare state budgets is pointless. At the current level of international migration and on the account of migration policies applied across the EU, immigrants are not the main answer for current demographic challenges, nor do they stand at the core of the social policy-related problems. Against this background, Geddes (2003) disagrees with the claim that migration might have a major impact on European welfare states.